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Yesterday, I spent the day moving equipment in Socorro. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and I am almost finished. Perhaps I will be able to move onto other projects after I finish with this nonsense.

I commuted to Socorro with the Malibu. It will live down there during the semester, available for my commutes to Magdalena. It took a minute or two to get started, but then it ran the whole way without any hiccups.

In the evening, I commuted home via train and bus. JoAnna picked me up at the bus station, and we spent the rest of the night chatting and having a good time. We sat outside in the pleasant evening. Joey came out and showed us photos from the Joan Jett and Boston concert he had attended a few weeks ago.

Yesterday was my first day back in Socorro after my trip to Illinois. I started out the day by meeting with my department head to see what had been screwed up since I last set foot on campus. As it turns out, we have like two weeks to move our pilot scale plant equipment out of the storage space we were given last summer, after they forced us out of another space. Naturally, there is no funding, no help, and no new storage space to do all of this.

Anyway, after stewing about it for a bit, I realized that some of the administration is mentally handicapped, and it is not fair to belittle them. Me, being an engineer, I will figure out what to do. I started moving things around and sorting through our stuff. Even so, I started applying for other jobs. Not saying I will leave, but this moving every five minutes is starting to piss me off. If I move without additional pay, there will be no incentive for them to ever pay me extra again. If I don’t move, they’ll make it an issue at a more inconvenient time. Either way, with other offers, I will be free to tell them where to stick their job at any moment.

In the evening, I commuted home. I did find out that the bus schedule is going to change, and that, if I stay at NMT and Magdalena, my commute will be nearly an hour and a half shorter!

I did a little grocery shopping and headed home. I was able to jumpstart the Malibu, and it seems to be running just fine. I will probably take it for a spin in a few days, just to keep it running.

Yesterday, I started out by attending the Socorro Hamfest and acting as a Volunteer Examiner (VE). The VE’s administer the amateur radio licensing exams. I am proud to say that this past test session netted about 9 new tech students as amateur radio operators. Several folks from the community did well as well. In fact, everyone that entered that room left away with something- a new license or an upgrade. I guess our cram session was successful after all.

In the afternoon, I worked on a few smaller projects, one of which was getting VHF running in the Malibu. I didn’t make any contacts, but i heard folks on the repeater, and was able to key it up several times on my drive to Belen.

Once I arrived in Belen, I took the train to Albuquerque, picked up the Crown Vic and headed to a church that my girlfriend’s family attend. They have a coffee house in the basement and live music every Saturday night, so that was a good show.

Yesterday was quite busy. I started the day by working on the Malibu for quite some time. I wanted to get the window to roll up again, as the power window had failed. I disassembled the door, and magically, the switch started working again. There’s nothing worse than an intermittent problem, so I drove to the junk yard and bought another switch, so that when this one does fail, I’ll have a replacement on hand.

After that, I finished out my grocery shopping for the weekend, and then returned home to cook the rest of the meals for the week. I also ran some laundry, cleaned the cat boxes, added 40 lbs of salt (level 2) in the water softener and did some random cleaning and sorting.

I also tested out my new gas-powered weed whacker, which worked quite well. The biggest complaint I had with it was the vibration and the fact that it threw grass much farther and harder. I had to take a shower afterwards, as I was completely covered in clippings. Other than that, it worked like a charm.

In the evening, I fell asleep in my computer chair with one cat behind my head (Lester) and another just off my right arm (Abe).

Yesterday, I spent the day in Socorro at NMT. I took the buses and trains down and I spent the day organizing the labs. I have a ton of boxes with miscellaneous stuff in them from our very abrupt move, so I sorted out electronic components, tools, and cabling. I have almost completely finished cleaning up the Unit Operations Lab, minus hanging a poster or two, and moving a box of hoses elsewhere. The design lab still needs work, but it is much better off than it was in the morning.

I also started cleaning up the Tech Amateur Radio Association webpage, which was last updated in 2013.

I had lunch with an old friend of mine from Virginia Tech who moved out here with his wife. We went to El Sombrero, which is one of the better restaurants in town, and my first exposure to New Mexican food when I moved out here in 2005.

After lunch, I continued working in the labs, though in the afternoon, I switched over to programming LabVIEW for the batch reactor. As it turns out, the pH probes drift so much that I can’t seem to get them to work in LabVIEW. What was a nice, linear equation to represent pH a week ago, now shows a pH of 130, which makes no sense. I will have to investigate this some more.

In the evening, I drove over to my brother’s house. I had found out earlier in the day that the trunk of the Malibu leaks, and so I had a mess to clean up. Instead, I got there and I couldn’t roll up the driver’s side window. I think the motor may have worn out. Thankfully, it didn’t rain, but the window was left open for now.

Well, yesterday was a little exciting. I drove to Magdalena in the morning in the Malibu. When I arrived at the school, the entire contents of my radiator dumped out in the parking lot. I limped the car into the high school auto shop and hitched a ride back to NMT with some of the other tutors.

The school day was really relaxed, as many of the students were in PARCC testing. I did, however, learn that I must contribute to the New Mexico Educators Retirement Fund, which I may get if I ever retire. What it means today is that my Magdalena and my APS paychecks are now cut 11%.

When I arrived back at NMT, I hitched another ride to Albuquerque with one of my friends so that I could make it to the Landmark Seminar this evening. We arrived in Albuquerque with plenty of time to spare, so we had dinner at the Library, and then went to seminar.

In the evening, my girlfriend informed me that the Volvo was stuttering. I rode home from the seminar and when we arrived home, I could tell that it was burning oil. She is going to take it into the shop tomorrow.

The roofers began construction on our new roof yesterday, so I’ll post photos of that later on.

Yesterday, I started my day by dropping the Malibu off for a repair at Firestone. Actually, I dropped it off for a pressure test to see where it was leaking. When they gave me the estimate, I decided I would handle it myself later. Anyway, I dropped the car off and then walked/ran up the hill to my house, getting in a little bit of exercise.

I did a little grocery shopping and also bought a bunch of manure for the garden. I added it to the top part of my garden, and will finish up over the next few days.

In the evening, we had dinner at Annapurna’s and did a car pick-up, where I picked the Malibu up from Firestone and the Crown Vic from the train station. All vehicles are home today.

Thank you for reading my post. I will post some photos of my NM QSO Party (amateur radio) in the near future, so stay tuned.